Those, like myself, who've read The Baroque Cycle,
remember Robert Hooke fondly.
Hat tip to the TimesOnline for calling our attention to:
"
The papers of one of Britain’s greatest scientists, which were lost for centuries and saved for the nation in a £1 million sale last year, become available to read online today.
The innovative “digital folio” provides unprecedented public access to hundreds of pages of manuscript notes and minutes kept by Robert Hooke, who is sometimes described as Britain’s Leonardo da Vinci.
The remarkable collection contains Hooke’s minutes of early meetings of the Royal Society, taken while he was curator of experiments and then secretary of the national academy of science, between 1661 and 1692.
They record many of the scientist’s own experiments and others conducted by figures such as Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Christopher Wren, as well as the disputes and rivalries that arose among the founding fathers of British science.
Hooke’s achievements included Hooke’s law of elasticity, Hooke’s universal joint, and discoveries in microscopy including the cellular structure of plants. He invented the iris diaphragm in cameras, the balance wheel in watches, and coined the word 'cell'.
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3 comments:
Work is blocking me from accessing your links *grrrrr
But it sounds like this Hooke character was brilliant. The only complaint I have is that he's a bit frightening in his last photo on your post. It reminds me a bit of a deranged version of Ichabod Crane or something.
Oh, and if you add up the numbers in his birth and death years... 1+6+3+5+1+7+0+3 you get 26.
But really, what does that have to do with anything?
...the sand worms....the spice...folding space...is there a connection?...
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